Rachel used to hang around with us at AT’s. She also moderated the blog for a while. She runs a blog in which she talks about her life in Scotland, with a focus on living a low-carbon life, especially biking and plant-based diets. Follows an edited transcript of the last time we touched base.Rachel’s text is in roman, mine is in italic.

i bet it would be cool to have a more humane city centermore so for a city that is centered around fossil fuels

I don’t know whether I’ll ever see it happen but I will keep trying until it does happen or I die.

you don’t take no as an answer, do you

nope

if only we were all like youso you went to the parliament

I organised it 🙂

i see that

lolThere’s just no-one else here to do it

the photo reveals your movement is now part of the yellow vests

No, don’t say that. I don’t want to be aligned with them because they started by protesting a tax on fuel but I’m totally in favour of taxing fuel as are most cyclists.

you’re right, sorry

So do you have climate questions you want to ask?

well, yes, i do, but the interview is about you

Yes, I saw one of them. Is this the interview now?

yes, it’s just an edited chat

ok, well what do you want to know?

we usually have space for a few questionswell, first of allhow does it feel to have left climateball(asking for a friend)

hahaHave I left?I still see the denial and hear itI just actively ignore it nowI also think that group is getting smaller and will eventually wither away to nothing. Is that just my imagination, do you think?

i think the more we hear about contrarians, the more we hear the same contrariansit’s easy to spot those who are just trying to push talking pointsthere is a death thread on twitter where all the contrarians come and goit’s so big the twitter engine wrecks itso i think many contrarians are caught in their own matrix

Are they all on Twitter now? I guess WUWT is still active but I never read it.

the thread has been going on since at least june 2017

The same thread?

more or less, it’s complex, as one can only have 50 interlocutors at the same timebut yeah

That’s crazy. Why don’t they start a new one?

twitter also changed its system to accomodate that kind of thingthe thread has been restarted many times, but it’s like a magnet

you’re better placed than me to say – you worked for wordpressaren’t blogs dying

I hope not. I want to keep blogging. Twitter can’t replace that.

personal blogs are small, the tool is great, i have yet to find something better

I do notice that businesses are starting to create Facebook pages as their only online presence and I think that’s a terrible mistake.

i do toomy only activity on fb is to push newsies about how awful fb is

lolI just read local news headlines on FB now and keep it for messenger with my friends and family

when did you quit wp

Over a year ago.March 2018 was my last month

do you miss working there

Sometimes. I’m still a very loyal blogger on wpcom and will never give that up. But I needed more of a challenge work-wise and I’ve got that now.

i thought you were bored by your new job

I was until I got promoted.

good thing you got boredi should get bored more often

I’m now transitioning into a product manager role. My company is sending me on a product manager course starting next week.

what’s that

This is the courseAs a product manager I’ll be steering the direction of development of our product.I will decide what gets implemented next and why.I’m really lucky to get this opportunity.It’s a bit daunting in many ways.

you’ll have a team working for you

Not exactly. We’ve already got a team of developers so I’ll be working closely with them. But I’ll also be working with our commercial team to learn what prospective clients want and I’ll continue to work closely with support to understand the needs of our current user-base. I’ll be in the middle linking all the different teams.

should we plug the company, or you prefer not to

Sure! It’s Award Force. We make software for managing awards, competition, grants, scholarships and stuff like that. We facilitate the submission and managing of entries and the full judging process. It’s a feel-good industry because it’s all about recognising human achievement.

nice

It’s a nice field to be in and the company is fully carbon neutral.

how so

We’re not certified or anything but we calculated all our emissions and offset them with tree planting. We also make regular donations to Sea Shepherd Conservation.

george may have a point in saying that we may need to stop eating fish for a whilei have become a part-time vegetarian

That’s great! What is part-time though? If it’s just veggie one day per week then that’s really not part-time. Did you see my family was on BBC news recently as a low carbon family?

yes, I have an electric cargo trikeIt’s great! It gives me confidence on the roads because it has a throttle which gives you a boost to get started.Cargo bikes are the future for last mile deliveries.Just getting some rocket from my garden

so you still rent cars for your holyday tripsif only cars were like cargo bikes

Yes, we either rent a car or use the car-club car. We’re members of a car club here. I do wish you could pedal in cars. It would give you something to do on a long journey.

still more sensible than owning one, and refutes the dilemma

Way cheaper too

you still have that book on your website?

How not to die cookbook?Yes, I cook mostly recipes from that except on burger or haggis night.The How not to die cookbook has a great vegan recipe for Mac and cheese.

will try iti think if we allow for some meat, say each month, vitaminic needs can be met

you’ll change your mind

you know me, i willwhat’s your most favorite easy recipe that could change the world

um, maybe what I ate tonight? Veggie burgers? They’re so yummy. I could eat them every night. Healthy too and low environmental impact and so easy to make. I guess it depends what type of burgers you buy. I don’t get the fake meat ones.

i’ve heard they’re goodi have many versions, one i like is with mushrooms

Mushrooms are good

they may outlive us

Maybe

so, christchurch, any news from your family over what happened

We definitely talked about it although none of our family live thereWe were all horrifiedWe used to live not far from one of the mosquesThere are so many shootings in America now that I don’t think they’re even reported on the news any longer

at least they stopped advertising the names

that’s good

how do you live brexit

I hope it doesn’t happen but if it does there’ll likely be another Scottish independence referendum and then Scotland will probably become a separate country and rejoin the EU

will the brexit thing be a problem to stay in scotland for your family

no, it doesn’t affect us in that way because we’re not European

god that’s silly, lol

We’re not allowed to live and work here without a visa anywayEuropean citizens can move around and work anywhere in the EU but that doesn’t apply to usIf Scotland becomes independent it might become easierIt would be interesting to have another referendum to see whether people have changed their minds about Brexit. I think a lot of people have. Most people in Scotland want to stay in the EUIt was something like 60% in the referendum

it’s less divisive than the separation, then

yes

overall you seem happy

Very. Things are good for me. I’m happy where I’m living, I’ve got a lovely family, and work is pretty good. Just as long as we don’t have leave Scotland I’m happy.

you would?

No, I don’t want to. I love it here.

so, all this happinessand you left climateballthere are no coincidences

I just got busyI don’t have time to follow all the online climate discussions

looks like ityou haven’t missed anything

Still the same conversations over and over again?

it’s just one big exchange, with some fixed points, yesit evolved a bit, as contrarians have become more isolatedthey said their piecetheir best concerns have been integratedtime to move onperhaps they got busy too

i doubt itthey know they’ve lost. we’ve all lost. they don’t realize how much it will all cost us

As Willard mentioned at the top of the post, Rachel used to hang around here. Rachel wrote a number of post, but also helped a lot with moderation, on occasion having to call me out when what I had said maybe wasn’t optimal. If you regard this blog as having a decent tone, and the comment threads as being quite reasonable, that’s in big part because of Rachel’s positive influence.

Willard, wind power & bike advocates shouldn’t call sailors names.The permanent magnet motor-gererators in modern wind turbines can generate power through a tall ship’s propeller as well as automating sail handling- the big tradtional sall training ships take hundreds of hungry hands to operate, but the next generation need just a few per mast-

Modern designs of iceboats are very efficient, utilizing aerodynamic designs and low friction, and can achieve speeds as high as ten times the wind speed in good conditions. International DN iceboats often achieve speeds of 48 knots (89 km/h; 55 mph) while racing, and speeds as high as 59 knots (109 km/h; 68 mph) have been recorded.[3] Skeeters and older large stern-steerer iceboats can exceed 90 knots (170 km/h; 100 mph). The rumored, but unconfirmed, top speed of an iceboat is over 130 knots (240 km/h; 150 mph). One reference to a timed run on Lake Geneva, Wisconsin reported an “E-Skeeter” as having reached 137 knots (254 km/h; 158 mph). The same reference reported clocking a DN 60 iceboat on a closed course over black ice on Green Bay, Wisconsin at 94 knots (174 km/h; 108 mph). The stern-steerer Debutaunte, recently rebuilt, was timed over a measured mile at 124 knots (230 km/h; 143 mph) on the ice of Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin in 1938.

The apparent wind speed over its sails increases as a vessel accelerates into the wind, increasing the airfoil lift to windward , further increasing speed The high drag of a displacement hull limits the terminal speed of monohulls to 50 knots. The calmer the water the faster the V max-I’ve been to 2.2 V in light air in America’s Cup trials with real hulls, and the postmodern AC hydrofoils get well past 3.

But they’re not rally sailboats when they do that- more like iceboats with wet feet.